Dim sum recipes Archives - Asian Dumpling Tips

Egg Custard Buns Recipe (Lai Wong Bao)

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Don’t be put off by the name of this sweet bao. Egg custard buns are not a body sculpting issue that you need to work off, well…unless you eat too many of them! I made a batch today to help a young woman satisfy her boyfriend’s love for these steam filled buns. Who would think that leavened steam bao could help lovers?

As with the chicken and shiitake mushroom bun filling, this one was developed to be used with the basic yeast dough in Asian Dumplings. Add it to your repertoire for an unusually fun sweet dumpling treat!

The recipe for the egg custard bun filling is on Viet World Kitchen.

Steamed Chicken and Shiitake Mushroom Bun Recipe

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I love the richness of chicken thigh and the savory depth of shiitake mushroom. Why not combine the umami goodness of both ingredients into a dumpling filling and stuff it in a Chinese steamed bun? I’ve had several renditions of such a steamed chicken bun, and the one that Slanted Door in San Francisco presents is among the best. You can get some from their Out the Door takeout operation at the Ferry Building.

Charles Phan and his crew have crafted a tasty filling that combines Vietnamese and Chinese traditions. There are shallots, fish sauce and oyster sauce. After all, Charles is ethnically Chinese Vietnamese. It is appropriate for his food to reflect that heritage.

Below is my rendition of Slanted Door’s steamed chicken bun filling. It’s really great if you hand-chop the chicken into pieces the size of large peas. For details, see “Hand Chopping and Mincing Meat” in Asian Dumplings, page 158. It’s not as difficult as you may think! You’re only talking a generous 1/3 pound of meat.

As with all of the bao fillings in the Asian Dumplings cookbook, this one can be used in the steamed filled buns recipe (page 95). It’s not as good for baked filled buns recipe.

Chicken and Shiitake Mushroom Bao Filling

The photo at the top is of small steamed buns filled with this chicken and mushroom mixture. The filling itself isn’t very attractive so I didn’t split open the bun. For help on shaping nice buns (yes, I did type that!), see the written instructions for the Closed Satchel shape (page 52) or watch the how-to video.

Makes 1 1/3 cups, enough for 16 medium or 32 small buns

2 tablespoon canola or peanut oil
1/3 cup chopped shallot or red onion
2 large dried shiitake mushrooms, stemmed, reconstituted, and cut into small dice (1/4 cup)
1/4 cup chopped garlic chives or scallion , green part only
1/2 teaspoon plus 1 or 2 pinches of salt
1/4 teaspoon black or white pepper
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon fish sauce or light (regular) soy sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons oyster sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons egg white, lightly beaten
6 ounces coarsely ground or hand-chopped boneless, skinless chicken thigh
2 tablespoons cup coarsely chopped cilantro, leafy tops only
1 1/2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger

1. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the shallot, and cook for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring frequently, until they start to caramelize. Add the mushroom, sprinkle in 1 or 2 pinches of salt, and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until fragrant. Remove from the heat, stir in the garlic chives. Set aside to cool completely.

2. In a larger bowl, combine together the cooled vegetables, chicken, cilantro, and ginger. Stir together, making sure the ingredients have commingled well.

3. In a small bowl, combine the 1/2 teaspoon salt, pepper, sugar, fish sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, cornstarch and egg white. Beat with a fork to blend well. Pour over the chicken and vegetable mixture, and stir, fold, and mash everything together into a cohesive mixture.

4. Cover the filling with plastic wrap and set aside for 30 minutes, or refrigerate overnight, returning it to room temperature before assembling the bao.

Portuguese Egg Tart Recipe (Poh Taht, Pasteis de Belem)

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Ask and you shall receive. Thank you to everyone who contributed insights on my question about Portuguese-Chinese egg tarts. They are a Portuguese treat called pasteis de Belem (a.k.a., pastel de nata) that were brought to Macau and adopted quite heartily by the Chinese. The Chinese, particular those in nearby Hong Kong created a riff by making their own Hong Kong-style egg tarts in the 1940s. The resulting Cantonese dahn taht has become ubiquitous with Chinese bakeries and dim sum houses.

Many of you submitted Portuguese egg tarts tips, such as where I can get them in the Bay Area, such as the bakery in Milpitas Square off the 880 freeway, in the 99 Ranch Market shopping center. Amy Sherman of CookingwithAmy.com gave a link to her post on the famous Portuguese egg tarts from the Antiga Confeitaria de Belém pastry shop in Lisbon, Portugal. That bakery was the one that commercialized the tarts in 1837. Before then, Portuguese egg tarts were made and sold by the Catholic nuns of the Jerónimos Monastery. (Praise the sisters!) Others pointed to the Macao institution that’s renowned for their Portuguese egg tarts – Lord Stow’s bakery. Stowe’s cross between the English and Portuguese versions is the benchmark for Portuguese egg tarts in Asia. Egg tart fever hit Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan in the late 1990s.

I looked up Stow’s and found this YouTube video which was incredibly enlightening. Watch it and in the first minute, catch how the pastry is rolled up into a cylinder and then pressed into the tart shell! For those of you who have the Asian Dumplings cookbook – that cylindrical treatment of dough is the same as what’s used for Chinese flaky pastry on page 120 to make things like Malaysian curry puffs. I now wonder if the Chinese got that from the Portuguese? I’ve not seen that technique applied to puff pastry in other cuisines.

By using a cylinder of rolled up puff pastry-type dough (some describe it as a Swiss roll) for the pastry, the tart shell naturally pushes upwards as it bakes in the oven. All that hot air forces the custard to puff up like a mushroom cap and when things deflate after baking, you get the characteristic undulating top. I know this because I went about five rounds with baking the tarts to develop my own Portuguese egg tart recipe.

What do you know about Portuguese Chinese Egg Tarts?

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When I was in Sydney last November, Chris Tan of Foodfella.com was raving about tasting some freshly made Portuguese egg tarts that a local Portuguese baker had made. He showed me a food porn-type of photo he’d taken to whet my appetite, and explained that it was a Macau specialty. That makes the little sweet kinda like a Portuguese Chinese egg tart, seeing how they’re very very similar to Cantonese egg tarts that you find at dim sum joints and bakeries.

I let the notion of that tart simmer in the back of my Asian dumpling brain. I even saw a recipe in a new book coicidentally by Chris’s dad, Terry Tan, called The Food and Cooking of South China. It’s hard for me to make something I’ve never tasted. How was I going to get my hands on one? Portuguese egg tarts are not a commonly found item in the United States at Chinese restaurants, or so I thought.

Japanese Braised Pork Belly Buns Recipe

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Steamed Chinese buns stuffed with slices of savory-sweet pork belly is all the rage these days, thanks to David Chang and his staff at Momofuku in New York City. They didn’t invent this snack, as Chang would admit, but just made it ultra hip. The Chinese came up with this rich ditty that utilizes humble steamed rolls made from Chinese yeast-leavened dough (famian) and braised pork belly, a very inexpensive cut. The combination is elegant tasting, especially if you pair champagne with it. A nice appetizer or snack for the holidays.

Bao dough is basically Chinese bao dough and it can be filled and steamed into a bun or left unfilled and steamed into a bread or roll, depending on its shape. I grew up going to weddings and like where little steamed buns were served alongside roast duck, char siu pork and roast pork. We treated them just like western rolls, splitting them open and stuffing them with whatever rich meats were around. Once I figured out how to make my perfect steamed Chinese buns, there was no stopping me. After tasting the pork belly buns at Momofuku Ssam bar a couple years ago, I started braising pork belly for stuffing into little steamed rolls.

Vegetarian Daikon Rice Cakes a la Slanted Door Recipe (Luo Bo Gao)

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To test drive Wai Chu’s recipe for Chinese daikon radish cakes, I bought a lot of daikon radish. You never know how much you’ll need and I didn’t want to keep running back to the store. Wai’s luóbo gāo (lok bok gow in Cantonese, 蘿蔔糕) from The Dumpling cookbook worked out like a charm on the first run-through so I had several pounds of leftover radish, some of which were used for Vietnamese daikon and radish pickles (do chua) that I’ll be stuffing into banh mi sandwiches.

Watching Charles Phan compete against Cat Cora on Iron Chef America’s battle almond got me thinking about Slanted Door’s vegetarian version of the daikon radish cakes. I recalled Phan proudly telling me in an interview how he infused a lot of umami into the cakes so that people wouldn’t miss the traditional dried shrimp and Chinese sausage. The Vietnamese cooks at Slanted Door who are in charge of the radish cakes said that it’s a perennial favorite; they should know as they’ve worked with Phan for many years. In tribute to Phan and his hardworking staff, I decided to take Wai’s recipe and make it vegetarian.

With all of that in mind, I used dried shiitake mushroom, soaking them and using the soaking liquid to infuse the mushroom and daikon with savory depth. I also sautéed the mushroom with scallion to further punch up the flavor, and added chopped cilantro. Beyond that, I just treated the mixture like the daikon radish cake recipe from The Dumpling. Voila – vegetarian daikon radish cakes that were full of flavor. Fried up, the cakes were just delightfully flavorful. In side by side taste tests with my husband Rory and our house guests Robyn Eckhardt and Dave Hagerman (EatingAsia blog) it was hard to choose which we liked more – the traditional version or the vegetarian one. Here’s the recipe for you to try and decide for yourself:

(For information on rice flour and wheat starch see the post on Asian dumpling ingredients. The glossary in Asian Dumplings, pages 8 to 17, has more details.)

RECIPE

Vegetarian Daikon Rice Cakes
Luobo Gao

Serves 6 to 8 as a snack or side dish

Dumpling
9 ounces (2 cups) regular rice flour, preferably a Thai brand, such as Erawan
1 ounce (scant ¼ cup) wheat starch
1 teaspoon and 1/4 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
1 pound daikon radish
4 large dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated in 1 1/4 cups of water, stemmed and finely chopped
1 tablespoon canola or peanut oil
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon light (regular) soy sauce
2 scallions, finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro (stems and leaves)

Canola oil, for panfrying
Light (regular) soy sauce
Chile Garlic Sauce, homemade or storebought

1. Combine the rice flour, wheat starch, 1 teaspoon salt, and pepper in a large bowl and set aside near the stove.

2. Peel the daikon and grate it through the small holes of your grater onto a nonterry kitchen towel. Or, use the smallest shredder blade on your food processor and transfer to a nonterry kitchen towel. Bring together the ends of the cloth and twist to squeeze out as much of the liquid as possible into the measuring cup. Transfer the daikon to a medium pot.

3. Remove the mushrooms from their soaking liquid. Measure out 3/4 cup of the liquid and add it to the daikon juices. Add enough water to the daikon juice and mushroom soaking liquid to make 3½ cups. Add this liquid to the daikon in the pot. Set aside.

4. Trim away the mushroom stems and then finely chopped the caps. You should have about 3/4 cup. Set aside.

5. Heat up the 1 tablespoon of oil in a medium skillet over medium high heat. Add the mushroom, stirring, for about 45 seconds until aromatic. Sprinkle in the 1/4 teaspoons salt, sugar, and soy sauce. Cook, for about 2 minutes, until there is little liquid remaining and the mushroom is sizzling a bit. Add the scallion and cilantro, cook for about 30 seconds more to develop the flavor, then remove from the heat. Set aside.

6. Bring the pot of daikon to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to simmer. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. Add the mushroom mixture and let simmer for another 5 minutes. Remove from the heat. Whisk in rice flour in 4 batches, doing your best to incorporate the flour to avoid large lumps. In the final addition of flour, switch to a wooden spoon as the batter will stiff and thick (you can stick a spoon into the pot).

7. Oil a high sided, 9-inch wide round cake pan. Add the dumpling batter, spreading it out to fill the pan. Smooth out the top with a spatula, dipping it into water, as needed.

8. Steam over boiling water for 40 to 60 minutes, replenishing the water as necessary. The radish cake is done with a toothpick inserted comes out relatively clean. Cool on a rack completely before using.

9. To unmold the daikon radish cake, run a knife around the edge and then cut a small piece. Wedge a dinner knife of spatula into the cake and then lift it up from the pan. The first piece and cut is the hardest. Beyond that, it’s easy and the cake should lift off the pan without a hitch.

10. You can eat the radish cake as is, but I love to panfry pieces of it. Cut the cake anyway you want, into thick slices like 1/2-inch thick dominos, 1-inch cubes, whatever. (You can refrigerate the cake, up to a week, slicing and frying right before eating.)

11. To panfry, coat a large skillet with oil and heat over medium-high heat. Add the radish cake slices, with one their large flat sides down. Let them fry, undisturbed, for about 4 minutes, until crisp and golden brown. They’ll stick at first but will eventually release. Turn them over to brown the other sides. Serve hot with a soy sauce and chile garlic sauce.